World War III
The skeletal world of 2033 lies in ruins as a result of World War III, the Great War of 2013. Overview The great war is an integral part of the Metro canon. Very little is known about the war in itself, including why and exactly how it was fought, though the Enter The Metro game info animation, revealed that a total of 20,000 warheads were used, and the war began with an exchange between two Middle Eastern countries - appearing to be Iran or Iraq, and Lebanon or Israel. After the initial exchange, it appears that a number of other Middle-Eastern countries revived the signal to fire their own missiles - prompting the United States, and then the rest of the world, to begin firing all their missiles at each-other. The end result creating a global exchange. While currently countries that have nuclear weapons include France, Britain, China, North Korea, Israel, India and Pakistan, it is implied in Metro 2034 that the United States was a definitive enemy of Russia during the Great War. What is for sure however, from Stepan's account of the war along with flashbacks and dialogue in Last Light, and the live action shorts, nuclear weapons were launched at Russia first. Several missiles were launched from Moscow and other launch sites back at the enemy shortly before the bombs hit. After Moscow was destroyed, the surviving nuclear submarines, confused and with no one to lead them, either launched their payload in retaliation or stood down, in an attempt to preserve what was left of humanity. However, in the end the entire world was completely devastated. Result As apparent from the story Britain, the devastation of the earth was global, or near-global. The ash and dust that was thrown up into the air cut off the earth from a majority of the sun's light, causing a phenomenon known as nuclear winter. The atomic bombs that were dropped destabilized some tectonic plates around Moscow, creating mass earthquakes in the early days after the bombs. But even though the surface of the world was scorched, it was the Russian survivors of the post-apocalyptic metro system that faced the real horrors of the war: the atomic, biological, and chemical atrocities that grew from the ash. It is unknown what the other countries hit by the nukes did but presume they did the same as the Russians, hid underground. Some of the novels from the Universe of Metro 2033 book series (for example: Piter) reveal that inhabitants of St. Petersburg also survived the nuclear war by hiding underground in the metro tunnels of their own city. In the Metro 2033 book it was mentioned that a group of soldiers in tanks survived the war initially by buttoning down the hatches on their tanks and setting up a camp in a less iradiated area whilst keeping radio contact with some metro dwellers but a few years later lost radio contact with the metro suggesting they were killed by mutants of some kind.In Towards the Light, it is revealed that some areas of the earth were not directly hit by any of the bombs, thus they have remained habitable for humans - free from radiation and mutants. Metro Live Action Short On the 24th of May, 2012, a live action movie was posted to YouTube in promotion of the Metro 2033 videogame's sequel. The film gave a snapshot of the moments before the bombs fell. Trivia *Comments made by the currency exchange booth survivor suggests that the war (or at least the first attack on Moscow) took place in early July 2013 - being sometime around July 5. *In the Metro 2033 novel it states that a biological weapon was launched at the Kremlin and was undetected by the Russian missile defense system,this explains why D6 was unoccupied as the occupants of the Kremlin were mostly killed in the biological attack and were not evacuated to D6 in time. *The intro from the promotional website shows that Siberia, the Mid-Western United States, and much of the Southern hemisphere was spared from the exchange, meaning that parts of the world could very well be better off than the rest due to not having been affected by the nuclear winter and heightened global radiation levels quite as heavily, maybe still functioning to a certain extent. Furthermore, a comment made by a Ranger in D6 speculates that the Russian Government was moved to Siberia, meaning that the destruction might not as what it actually seems. *In Metro 2034 it states that America developed an "anti-rocket system" meaning that some areas of America may have survived a nuclear strike. **Due to Moscow's own missile defense system, some areas of Moscow are speculated to not have been destroyed by the nuclear strikes, though this likely amounts only to the outskirts of the city. Gallery GreatWar.png|As depicted in the Live Action Short. Nuclearlaunch.png|As seen in a vision Artyom experiences in Echoes MetroLastLight2.jpg|Aftermath of WWIII. A radiation filled swamp is created. Metro-Last-Light-sunlight.jpg|The light is a new setting on the surface. metro_last_light_10.jpg Category:Events Category:Wars